When the LibDems sent out their latest begging email for cash for the Eastleigh campaign, sending it to a Tory MP probably was not the best plan:

From: Paddy Ashdown
Sent: 12 February 2013 12:47
To: ADAMS, Nigel
Subject: Please do this today

Dear Nigel,

When we won Eastleigh in 1994, it was a breakthrough for Liberal Democrats. This by-election can be as well.

…

To give you just one example, a donation of £25 today will allow us to contact an extra hundred voters in Eastleigh before the weekend. Only Mike Thornton can beat the Conservatives in this campaign, and cannot afford to lose by a few votes.

Give whatever you can afford today, and you’ll make all the difference.

Thank you,

Paddy

–

From: ADAMS, Nigel
Sent: 12 February 2013 13:08
To: ’Paddy Ashdown’
Subject: RE: Please do this today

Dear Lord Ashdown,

Thank you so much for your email asking me to donate £25 to the Lib Dem campaign fund for the Eastleigh by-election.

I have given your appeal very serious consideration and decided that on balance, a donation to the speeding awareness charity BRAKE is a more appropriate donation to make at this time and I have duly done so.

Thanks again for getting in touch and the best of luck in your campaign.

Nigel Adams MP
Conservative Member of Parliament for Selby and Ainsty

Gloves? What gloves. Broom broom!

Some great top lines from the opening day of Vicky Pryce’s trial, not least her description of her husband’s former bisexual lover as “that man of yours”. The jury of eight women and four men today heard the not so jaw-dropping admission that Vicky’s main motivation was revenge. Guido’s favourite Greek economist told Isabel Oakeshott: “I have no doubt that I definitely want to nail him, more than ever actually”.

The court heard how Pryce tried to trick Huhne into confessing all during a taped phone call, but he saw through it and told her: “This is absolute cobblers…you are the only person batty enough to go to the press with this”. As Pryce became more exasperated she told him: “there are people outside my door and it’s all to do with your f***ing points and your f***ing man and it’s nothing to do with me”. The fourth recorded phone call in which Huhne tells Pryce there is “no upside” to talking to the papers is one to note. The trial continues…

Is it too early to open the champagne on a Monday morning?

The Met have just announced that they are to reopen the investigation into Denis MacShane’s mystery £7,000 fraud.

As mystic Guido alluded to on Friday afternoon.

It looks like he will be needing those files on his “welcome back to the Labour Party” cake after all.

Developing…

Another year, another crowd of venal, lying, cheating ‘honourable’ members bringing shame upon the Mother of Parliaments. There was much cause for celebration in November as the Standards and Privileges committee finally found that the disgraced invoice falsifier Denis MacShane was guilty of swindling tens of thousands of pounds worth taxpayers’ money. They described it as “the gravest case which has come to us for adjudication”, and MacShane’s career was over before this crooked, corrupt, gutter politician could say slush fund. Guido hazily remembers cracking open the seventh bottle of Chateau MacShane that fateful autumn afternoon. It’s now in the hands of the CPS...

Back in January Guido kicked off the year by launching a campaign against the MPs food and drink subsidy. This blog revealed that the taxpayer was subsidising their rib-eye steak and chips to the tune of £5.93 a pop, forking out £3.15 for each seared pigeon breast and chipping in £5.27 for each glazed belly of pork chowed down by our honourable members. John Bercow said there was nothing to see here. The old media didn’t agree…

As the year drew to a close another expenses scandal threatened to cost the jobs of several MPs at the next election. Guido caught a few rent-swappers of his own, it will be interesting to see how Stephen Dorrell, Linda Riordan, Meg Munn, Andy Burnham, Chris Bryant, Helen Grant, Bill Cash, John Whittingdale, Peter Luff, Jessica Lee, David Amess, Kevin Barron and Don Foster fare in 2015.

A review of this year’s expenses cheats would not be complete without a special mention for piggy-in-chief Margaret Moran. She received a two-year treatment order after she was found by a court to have committed 15 counts of false accounting.

And, lest we forget a politician who takes our money and laughs in our faces, wish a happy anniversary to Gordon Brown…

The history of the Fabian Society is full of evil, though Guido was under the impression they were pretending they had cleaned up their act. Their AGM takes place on Saturday in SW1, and a certain fraudster is due to take up his position on their committee:

Fabian Society Executive Committee Elections 2012/13

Elected

Stephen Twigg 607
Rachel Reeves 600
Sadiq Khan 556
Vera Baird 478
Denis MacShane 471
Jessica Asato 454
Austin Mitchell 429
Kate Green 401
Seema Malhotra 392
Suresh Pushpananthan 390
Kate Groucutt 385
Sara Ibrahim 372
Sundar Thavapalasundaram 287
Ivana Bartoletti 277
Sally Prentice 276

The last famous Fabian to go to prison was Oswald Mosley.

UPDATE: Fabians get in touch to say Denis is out.

Parliamentary privilege was cited last night by David Grossmann in his Newsnight report as being an obstacle to bringing Denis MacShane to trial, the Labour MP John Mann disagrees:

Not true that #macshane letters are covered by parliamentary privilege. It cannot be used to defend against criminal offences by an MP—
John Mann MP (@JohnMannMP) November 03, 2012

On Friday Guido was tipped off by a source close to the Standards and Privileges Committee that once they had published their report the way was open for the police to resume their investigations. After consulting a barrister, who was in absolutely no doubt that parliamentary privilege was no longer an obstacle, Guido wrote to Scotland Yard asking them to resume the case – as did the Tory MP Philip Davies.

In 2009 we did the same for Jim Devine who, like Denis MacShane, submitted falsified invoices to back up expense claims. You may recall that David Chaytor, Elliot Morley and Jim Devine went to the Supreme Court to argue that they were protected by parliamentary privilege. They attempted to use the 300-year-old law to argue that any case against them should be dealt with by Parliament rather than the courts. The Supreme Court ruled that expense fiddles were ordinary crimes not covered by parliamentary privilege. Devine was sentenced to 16 months…

Parliament have done it before and they can do it again. Naysayers in the Civil Service and the Palace say that it is not possible to strip a dead man of his title but that’s not quite true. Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, was executed in 1521 for treason but he did not forfeit his titles until 1523, two years after his death. All this “attainder by process” required was an Act of Parliament. Problem solved…

First reported in Daily Star Sunday

Mitchell evens to be next Cabinet Minister to exit.—
PoliticSmarkets (@politicsmarkets) October 15, 2012

His first big Commons test coming up this afternoon with two emergency statements. Will the Chief Whip be forced to hide again?

It’s crunch time for Pilgrims – today is the last day of the consultation into taxpayer funded trade union officials. Employment lawyer Francis Hoar has written on behalf of the TPA attacking public sector employers for breaking industrial relations law by delegating responsibilities to full time trade union officials. It’s pretty damning stuff:

Over to you Frankie…

UPDATE: If you can’t see the document above click here.

Norman Fowler when Tory Chairman promised…

“I have set out the position of Mr. Asil Nadir fully and clearly. Let me make this clear : we will return the money if it was stolen.”